Say Yes to Tap.
Bottled water wastes fossil fuels and water in production and transport, and when the water is drunk the bottles become a major source of waste. It takes more than 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.1 Each one of those bottles required nearly five times its volume in water to manufacture the plastic 2 and may have caused the release of nickel, ethylene oxide, and benzene.3 Then, rather than being recycled, 86 percent of them are thrown away.4 Breaking down these plastics can take thousands of years, while their components seep into our water supplies.
Impacts to the Eco Systems and Water Sources
The withdrawal of large quantities of water from springs and aquifers for bottling has depleted household wells in rural areas, damaged wetlands, and degraded aquifers. In the United States alone, more than 10 billion plastic water bottles end up as garbage or litter each year. (Sierra Club)
Is water really better bottled when it's shipped 6,000 miles?
Most of the price of a bottle of water goes for its bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit. Transporting bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. More than 5 trillion gallons of bottled water is shipped internationally each year. Here in San Francisco, we can buy water from Fiji (5,455 miles away) or Norway (5,194 miles away) and many other faraway places to satisfy our demand for the chic and exotic.
Drinking water is a good thing
According to a recent editorial in The New York Times: "... drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it." And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.
1 Blumenfeld, J. and Leal, S. “The real cost of bottled water” San Francisco Chronicle. February 18, 2007.
2 TriplePundent.com: Ask Pedro
3 “Bottled Water Campaign.” Sierra Club.
4 Container Recycling Institute
